#1

The war lasted three years. Three years of hand to hand combat, mortar shelling's, IED's, road side bombs and crippled people filling homes that were so happy they came back alive.

The soldiers returning weren't happy. They all carried deep scars. Some scars were on the outside, no one came through without wounds, but all carried scars inside, and they crippled the worst.

It is dehumanizing to listen to the screams of wounded soldiers, friends and brothers, and not be able to help them, because you yourself are so wounded you can't crawl to them to give aid.

Sometimes all you could do was hold their hand so they didn't die alone. Every member of the clan was put in this position, and to tender hearted people that lived and breathed Clora's faith, it took away part of what made them human.

One by one they straggled home, praying for the gentle care and prayer their bodies and souls needed.

Open arms greeted them and prayers were sent to heaven for their return. All of them needed the time and space to do nothing but try to come to terms with what they had seen and what they had to do. Sitting in the sun, the spring unfolding in silent glory all around them, was part of the therapy Clora and Mark used.

Finally the only members of the clan left out in the great void of war aftermath, were Tess and Bruce.

No one had heard from Tess in almost a year; and Clora tried to search mind after mind to find her beautiful daughter. Always she could feel Tess was alive, but in a unknown place.

Bruce was close to being released, and he didn't care if he ever did another surgery on a wounded person. The destruction in wounded lives had numbed him to the core.

He was requested to look in on a soldier that had knifed in the back during one of the last battles of the war. The woman was laying on her stomach so the oozing and serum bubbling wound was open to the air. He was prepped and ready for one last surgery, when he happened to look at the soldier's name.

Bruce had Tess Linderman on the operating table.